Economies for Healthier Lives - Year three evaluation: concluding the project

The Health Foundation’s Economies for Healthier Lives Programme (EfHL) funded five partnerships across the UK between 2021 and 2024 to develop locally-appropriate approaches with the aim of reducing health inequalities through action on economic development. The Glasgow City Region (GCR) EfHL project has aimed to maximise the health, wellbeing and economic benefits generated by the region’s capital investment programmes. The Glasgow Centre for Population Health have provided evaluation support to the Glasgow City Region (GCR) partnership, which has included annual reporting on progress and outcomes, concluding with this report at the end of year three.

In the final year of funding, the project delivered its primary objective of developing a toolkit to support the consideration of health in capital spend projects. This was achieved through a planned, persistent and iterative approach by the Project Lead and Core Team, underpinned by evidence and the experience of multiple stakeholders. The Capital Investment Health Impact Assessment Toolkit (or ‘CHIA’ toolkit) is and accessible and educational resource that can now be used to shape capital spend projects across the city region and beyond. 

Learning from this evaluation highlights that the toolkit has been successfully competed through a co-productive approach and that the groundwork for embedding it into regular practices is underway. Importantly, changes were made to enable more meaningful participation from Community Panel members in year three, and their contribution to the project is visible within the final resource. Despite the formal competition of the project, now represents a crucial period for ensuring that its impacts are maximised. Ongoing training is needed for practitioners to ensure uptake and successful implementation, while tracking, monitoring and further evaluation work are required to determine how the toolkit is being used and how it can be adapted to meet future needs.

You can also read our evaluation reports for year one and year two.